Why I built EzyMeet

My first year

Going into my first year, I made myself a promise: I was not going to burn out. I had watched enough teachers leave the profession early and I was determined to be different. My plan was simple. Build good systems, work smarter, and protect the time I actually wanted to spend in the classroom with students.

What I loved about the job was being in the room. Watching a student finally crack a concept they had been struggling with. Building relationships. That was the whole point. The paperwork and coordination around IEPs was part of the job, and I accepted that. But I was certain that by the time I got there, someone had figured out a better way to collect teacher feedback before each meeting.

I was wrong.

What I actually found

My master teacher had been in the building for over a decade. Deeply experienced, deeply caring, and deeply buried in manual process. In the weeks before IEP meetings, I watched her carry a physical notebook around the building, walking classroom to classroom, knocking on doors, catching gen ed teachers between passing periods. She was checking email constantly, leaving voicemails, following up on voicemails. It was relentless.

And when she finally got responses after all of that effort, a lot of them sounded like this:

I called the English teacher the afternoon before the IEP meeting. After a week of voicemails and follow-ups, she finally picked up. I asked how Johnny was doing with reading comprehension and written expression. She said: "He's doing well. He's a hard worker." That was it. That was the feedback I was supposed to bring into the meeting the next morning.

Not because she did not care. Because nobody gave her a structured way to respond.

That was it. Three seconds of thought after a week of chasing. Not because the gen ed teacher did not care. They cared plenty. But nobody had given them a structured way to respond, and they were busy too.

The gen ed teacher problem nobody talks about

There is another side to this that does not get enough attention. A general education teacher in a typical middle or high school may have 30 students with IEPs on their rosters. With anywhere from three to ten case managers in a building, that means a single gen ed teacher might get five completely different formats of feedback requests throughout the year.

One case manager sends a Google Form. Another sends an email with five questions in the body. Another stops by in person. Another sends a paper form home in the student's binder.

30 students. 5 case managers. 5 different systems. None of them consistent.

The gen ed teacher is not being difficult when they give a one-line answer. They are exhausted by the inconsistency, and they have no idea which format matters or what level of detail is actually needed.

When you give a gen ed teacher one clear, structured form that takes four minutes to fill out and actually asks the right questions for that student's specific disability, you get completely different feedback. Specific observations. Real data points. The kind of input that actually belongs in a PLAAFP.

So I started building

I am a teacher who also builds software. So I did what I do: I started building systems for myself first, then for my colleagues. Automated reminders. Structured forms matched to disability categories. Response tracking so I was never guessing who had and hadn't replied.

The difference was immediate. Teachers were responding more. The feedback was better. I was spending that ten hours on things that actually mattered. And the gen ed teachers in my building started commenting that dealing with my IEP requests was easier than dealing with anyone else's.

What EzyMeet is built to do

EzyMeet is not trying to replace the judgment of a great special educator. Every IEP is a human document, and the decisions in it belong to the team in that room. What EzyMeet handles is the logistics layer underneath all of that: the scheduling, the sending, the reminding, and the collecting.

Case managers get their time back. Gen ed teachers get a consistent, respectful experience. And every IEP meeting starts with a complete set of responses from every relevant teacher, organized and ready to use.

That is what it should have been from the beginning.